Internet Research最新文献

Purpose

This study aims to explore and understand the literature on digital transformation (DT) research that will lead to developing a conceptual and thematic structure of DT management.

Design/methodology/approach

The research approach employed a hybrid approach of bibliometric analysis and a structured review of DT management research studies from 2017 to 2023. Although systematic reviews and bibliometric analysis are distinct methods, they complement one another in research by enabling the synthesis and analysis of existing literature. Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) were selected as the bibliographic databases for this study since they are generally accepted as the most comprehensive data sources for various purposes.

Findings

Findings revealed 186 publications during these periods, with the top three publications being the Journal of Business Research, Business Horizons and California Business Review. Top-ranking researchers hailed from Germany, Japan and Spain. Keywords that appeared were innovation, digital transformation, artificial intelligence and DT. In the management area, there are fewer studies conceptualising DT management that led to this study forming a conceptual framework using a qualitative, interpretative and thematic analysis approach.

Originality/value

These findings are relevant for understanding the phenomenon of DT and DT management. The study contributes to the emerging body of knowledge in management and DT.

Purpose

In the current digital transformation era, guiding employees toward realizing self-leadership has become a critical strategy for enterprises to mitigate the risks of external uncertainty. This study explores the intrinsic relationship between enterprise social media (ESM) communication visibility and self-leadership on the basis of communication visibility theory (CVT) and conservation of resources theory (COR) to support the sustainable growth of employee self-leadership.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 332 Chinese employees across three stages. Hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrap method were employed to test the hypotheses.

Findings

Network translucence and message transparency positively affect self-leadership. Relational energy and job control mediate the relationship between communication visibility and self-leadership. Moreover, response expectations weaken the positive relationship between relational energy and self-leadership as well as between job control and self-leadership.

Practical implications

Managers can use ESM to provide work and social support for employees’ job control and social network development to achieve long-term maintenance of employees’ self-leadership. At the same time, within the context of ESM use, moderately reducing response expectations can offer situational support for employees to achieve self-leadership.

Originality/value

This research sheds light on the internal mechanism by which ESM communication visibility affects self-leadership and explores the key boundary conditions that impact how self-leadership is formed. These findings expand the understanding of self-leadership development in the context of ESM use and offer new technical insights for guiding and fostering sustainable employee self-leadership.

Purpose

Users contribute to online communities by posting and responding to discussion threads. Nonetheless, only a small fraction of threads gain popularity and shape community discourse. Prior studies have identified several factors driving thread popularity; however, despite their prevalence, the role of emotional expressions within discussion threads remains understudied. This study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of thread starters’ valence and embedded discrete emotions of anger, anxiety and sadness on thread popularity, drawing on the negativity bias and the emotion-as-social-information theories.

Design/methodology/approach

Using two samples from Reddit, this study employs negative binomial regression analysis to examine the hypothesized relationships.

Findings

The results demonstrate that negativity in thread starters significantly influences thread popularity; however, the expression of discrete emotions impacts popularity variously. In some contexts, such as COVID-19 vaccination subreddits, embedded anger in thread starters decreases thread popularity, whereas anxiety and sad expressions enhance it. In other contexts, such as professional discussions (e.g. r/Medicine subreddit), anger and anxiety expressions increase thread popularity, while sad expressions have no significant influence.

Research limitations/implications

The study is limited by its focus on specific emotions and contexts. Future research could examine a broader range of emotions, post-content modalities and the impact of cultural and linguistic differences.

Originality/value

This study contributes to theory by offering a new definition of thread popularity and enhancing our understanding of the impact of emotions in online discussions. It also provides practical implications for online community members and moderators seeking to promote discussion posts that help achieve community goals.

Purpose

This study explores how employees respond to social media-induced fear of missing out (FoMO) in the workplace and examines the subsequent impacts of these responses. Based on the transactional theory of stress and coping, the research focuses on how FoMO affects employees’ adoption of stress-coping behaviors: active work interruption (a problem-oriented strategy) and social network interaction (an emotion-oriented strategy). It further investigates the outcomes of these coping strategies – job burnout (resulting from the problem-oriented strategy) and workplace relationships (resulting from the emotion-oriented strategy). Additionally, the study explores how the perceived competitive climate moderates the effect of FoMO on these coping behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-phase survey yielded 244 responses, which were then analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling to validate the relationships among the variables.

Findings

The findings revealed that FoMO increases employees’ active work interruption, leading to job burnout. In addition, FoMO leads employees to engage in more social network interaction, which promotes workplace relations. The perceived competitive climate positively moderates the indirect effect of workplace FoMO through active work interruption and job burnout.

Originality/value

This study emphasizes that individuals are not merely passive recipients of stress but active agents in coping with it. This shift from “passive impacts” to “active responses” helps uncover the bidirectional impacts of social media-induced FoMO on employees, thereby enriching our understanding of FoMO and expanding the application of the transactional theory of stress and coping. Additionally, we explore the boundary conditions of the FoMO mechanism and advance research related to the perceived competitive climate.

Purpose

This study investigates the effect of de-influencing and its related content on consumer behavior compared with influencing content. It considers the gender of de-influencers and consumers’ varied reactions to distinct types of de-influencing.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on informational social influence theory, we conducted three experiments to investigate how consumers perceive and respond to de-influencing: the first explores consumer perception of social media de-influencers compared to influencers; the second examines the effect of de-influencers’ gender and the last compares consumer attitude toward various types of de-influencer content.

Findings

Consumers find de-influencers more credible than “traditional” influencers. De-influencing messages significantly affect attitude and purchase intention. The de-influencing creator’s gender does not affect brand attitude, perceived message effectiveness or perception. However, de-influencing video content influences attitudes toward brands and video effectiveness. Messages focusing on ethics and health elicit more negative perceived attitudes toward the brand.

Research limitations/implications

This pioneering research introduces “de-influence” as a new dynamic in social media marketing, revealing consumers’ preference for authentic, skeptical content over traditional influencer promotions. This lays the foundation for future research on consumer behavior and brand perception in digital spaces.

Practical implications

Brands in trust-sensitive industries should embrace authenticity and engage with de-influencers to build trust, turn criticism into growth opportunities and align themselves with consumer value.

Originality/value

Our study represents pioneering research in the emerging field of de-influencing, filling gaps in the literature and offering a comprehensive contribution to social media research.

Purpose

The persistence and virality of conspiracy theories online have raised significant concerns. This study revisits Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory to examine the spread of conspiracy theories on social media, specifically focusing on how factors influencing their diffusion evolve over time.

Design/methodology/approach

The study analyzes over 1.18 million COVID-19-related tweets using a combination of natural language processing, social network analysis and machine learning techniques. It explores the dynamic roles of novelty, content negativity, influencers, echo chamber members and social bots in the diffusion of conspiracy theories.

Findings

The results indicate that novelty, influencers, echo chamber members and social bots are positively associated with the spread of conspiracy theories. The initial dissemination of conspiracy theories is primarily driven by content novelty and influencer involvement. Over time, the perpetuation of these theories becomes increasingly influenced by content negativity and the involvement of echo chamber members and social bots. Social bots serve as important connectors within echo chambers and their removal significantly reduces network cohesion.

Practical implications

The findings provide practical guidance for social media platforms and policymakers in monitoring diffusion patterns and applying targeted interventions.

Originality/value

This study introduces a time-sensitive approach to understanding the spread of conspiracy theories on social media. By identifying the key drivers at different stages of the diffusion process, this study offers valuable insights for developing effective strategies to counteract the proliferation of conspiracy theories at various points in their lifecycle.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore how CEOs’ interpersonal communication styles on social media can effectively enhance the relationship with employees and increase their engagement on social media platforms.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey was conducted with 404 full-time employees working in corporations across various industries in the US. Only employees who “follow” their company’s CEO on social media were included in the study.

Findings

CEOs’ use of a conversational tone on social media helps employees perceive them as approachable and interactive leaders, thereby improving the quality of the CEO-employee relationship and increasing employees’ engagement on social media. CEOs’ personal disclosures on social media were found to promote employees’ perceptions of CEO approachability only when paired with a conversational communication style.

Research limitations/implications

Our study offers theoretical implications for communication and media literature by highlighting the potential of CEOs as chief “engagement” officers, capable of leveraging online platforms (i.e. social media) to foster employee interactions and support.

Practical implications

This study provides CEOs and communication practitioners with practical guidelines for using social media for both professional and social purposes as a crucial tool for internal relationship management.

Originality/value

This study is one of the first empirical attempts to examine the value of CEO social media communication as a key tool for building and maintaining quality employee–CEO relationship and engagement.

Purpose

Online games are highly popular Internet applications. Some games enable players to save game progress and accumulate experiences or changes to avatars during gameplay, whereas some other games do not, requiring players to restart from the beginning each time. That is, games differ in avatar accumulability. However, we do not know whether games should be designed to permit avatar accumulability or not and how it affects players’ gameplay experience and therefore game outcomes, indicating gaps. Research addressing these gaps can inform game makers in designing games that effectively strengthen their players’ game loyalty.

Design/methodology/approach

We used social identity theory (SIT) to construct a theoretical model. To test this model, three waves of survey data were gathered from the same 778 participants.

Findings

These findings uniquely indicate that avatar accumulability fosters avatar identification and increases players’ focused immersion, thus increasing players’ loyalty.

Practical implications

Game providers could include game features that enable players to accumulate their avatars’ in-game skins, levels, items (weapons and equipment) and experience points. This accumulability can help strengthen players’ game loyalty.

Originality/value

Overall, our study extends SIT by adding a new trigger (avatar accumulability) and two novel consequences of avatar identification (image protection and focused immersion) in avatar-related systems (games or gamified systems). The new trigger offers an actionable means to apply SIT, while the novel consequences verify the value of applying SIT to study online games.

Purpose

In the current digital business landscape, businesses heavily rely on their information technology (IT) departments to drive digital transformation initiatives. However, firms often face challenges in obtaining sufficient backing from their IT departments for such initiatives. This research explores the influence of IT departments’ intellectual capital, referred to as IT intellectual capital, on digital transformation under varying degrees of market turbulence.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey was employed to collect data from 296 IT managers and business managers from 148 firms in China. We used the seemingly unrelated regression to test hypotheses.

Findings

This study indicates that each category of IT intellectual capital – namely, IT human capital, structural capital and social capital – contributes positively to digital transformation. IT social capital mediates the effects of IT human and structural capital on digital transformation. Besides, market turbulence amplifies the effect of IT human capital on digital transformation, whereas it diminishes the influence of IT social capital on digital transformation.

Practical implications

Practitioners need to recognize the strategic role of IT intellectual capital in advancing digital transformation and develop appropriate IT intellectual capital according to the market environments in which the firm operates.

Originality/value

The study introduces novel perspectives on the antecedents of digital transformation and enhances the intellectual capital literature by revealing the influence of different types of IT intellectual capital on digital transformation under various levels of market turbulence.

Purpose

Social media-based brand communities (SMBBCs) have emerged as one of the most significant marketing tools due to their ability to create and maintain close relationships between SMBBCs and consumers. However, past studies have ignored intimacy toward SMBBCs, particularly the role of individual variances in their development. Researchers have revealed the significant impacts of individual differences in attachment styles on the development of brand–consumer relationships based on attachment theory. Accordingly, this study aims to explore the drivers of intimacy toward SMBBCs from the perspective of attachment theory.

Design/methodology/approach

This study examines a proposed model that integrates two attachment styles – attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety – self-disclosure on social media and intimacy toward SMBBCs through two samples in the context of brands’ Facebook fan pages.

Findings

The results show that attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety have significantly negative and positive effects on self-disclosure on social media, respectively, which contribute to intimacy toward SMBBCs.

Practical implications

The results offer brand managers significant implications for segmenting markets and developing relationship marketing strategies for their brand communities on social media.

Originality/value

This study is the first attempt to explore the driving factors of intimacy toward SMBBCs from the attachment theory perspective.